Air Skype: free phone from SAS airplane via Boeing Connexion
I spoke with Valdis Krebs this afternoon who was high over the Atlantic flying SAS on his way home from eastern Europe. He was talking to me using Skype, and not paying anything extra for the call over and above the $29 fee he paid for 6 hours of wifi service.
The flight used Boeing's Connexion service. Skype sound quality was as good as ever - he didn't have a separate mic and was just using the built-in on his Mac Powerbook.
The PR from Lufthansa has this about the service:
The network from Cisco includes five Cisco Aironet 350 Access Points, a Cisco 3640 Router, and nine digital switches for the hardwired Ethernet connections found in some seats in First Class and Business Class. The wireless, obviously, reaches everyone on the plane. The data throughput for users on the plane is about 3 Megabits per second (Mbps) downstream and 128Kbps for uploads.
Clearly that's not enough for a plane-full of freephone callers, but if you're lucky enough to be one of the early adopters, it sounds great. Just hope that there are no international spammers or p2p nodes on board.
UPDATE 2/21: More notes:
More links, courtesy of del.icio.us: skype, travel, voip, osx, connexion
We were both on the Mac OS X version of Skype, which does not yet have multiparty text IM - that would have been an ideal medium for the airplane narrowband environment when you are possibly juggling multiple calls in minimum time. As far as I'm concerned it's more about presence and real time communications in the air and less about whether you happen to have enough bandwidth to create a voice channel.
Some sites that picked up this article: Broadband Reports, asking "Will Connexion block VOIP traffic?"; Lifehacker saying "Fantastic use of Skype"; and the VOIP weblog asking whether people should be allowed to talk to people not right next to them on the flight. Om Malik writes: Time to kiss Verizon's Airfone goodbye.
Hi, Eric,
The Lufthansa release is two years old. Boeing's deployed Connexion service is 5 Mbps down and 1 Mbps with an option for 20 Mbps down with existing equipment.
Posted by: Glenn Fleishman | February 21, 2005 at 06:20 PM
Verizon's Airfone will still be around due to the fact they are the main supplier for phnoes on planes in the domestic US market. Connexion is mainly available on international flights.
Posted by: james | February 22, 2005 at 07:46 AM
We all love Skype. Specially since they DO have IM built into the Mac OS X version of Skype (for some time now). You must both be using a pre-1.0 version.
Posted by: leo prieto | February 22, 2005 at 12:26 PM
Tried Skype and even SkypeOut today when flying with Scandinavian Airlines. The quality it very very good - not comparable with satellite phones.
Posted by: Morten Marquard | October 11, 2005 at 08:53 PM
USA Today's Kevin Maney reports on this today:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/maney/2005-11-29-net-calls-planes_x.htm
He claims there will be "air rage" due to Skype calls, but that seems utterly unlikely given passenger demographics for this kind of service.
Posted by: Edward | November 30, 2005 at 11:07 AM
Boeing is shutting down Connexion -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5261562.stm
no mention of air rage, but the article says the service never took off as expected and is a drag on profits.
Posted by: Edward | August 17, 2006 at 09:21 PM
That is true but service never took off as expected
Posted by: aircraft p*rts | July 08, 2008 at 03:30 AM
Jon Steinberg writes about using wifi on an American Airlines flight:
http://twitter.com/jonsteinberg/statuses/913919398
@dshen AA wifi is $12 for the whole flight. AA claims all 767 flights cross country now have it. Now I may need to travel with 3rd battery
Posted by: Edward Vielmetti | September 08, 2008 at 04:48 PM